“Trying to Make Me Feel Like I’m White”: Asian Americans’ Racialized Experiences in Teacher Education

Research has shown how the experiences of Asian Americans are rendered invisible in education. Asian American educators can help challenge this invisibility, but are often trained in teacher preparation programs that marginalize their experiences. Engaging an AsianCrit framework to analyze interviews with 13 Asian and Asian American teacher candidates, we found that programmatic exclusion and tokenization of Asian American perspectives, including positioning Asian Americans as a “model minority” and “in proximity to Whiteness,” made them feel invisibilized in their teacher education program. Findings suggest a need for more explicit, critical learning opportunities to grapple with Asian American racialization in education.